“All About the Gut”

With Merinda Simmons’s post in mind, from a few days ago, concerning the use of “feelings” in current political discourse, a couple things stood out this morning in a radio story on a supposed shift in current US politics.

John Dickerson, a US journalist, points out how once rational campaigns — which had substance, premises, policy, and persuasive argumentation — are no longer the norm. For although it has always played somewhat of a role, the connection between voters and politicians is now, he concludes, “all about the gut.”

But then, elaborating on this shift to the gut, he curiously adds:

This feels older in its elemental appeal to voters than some of the other campaigns I’ve covered.

And then, later, in the same interview, commenting on watching a Hillary Clinton speech, when she looked straight into the camera to address Trump directly, he adds:

I felt like … that was a moment of toughness…

So what we have here is someone who feels that non-rational feelings are driving elections more now than then.

Hmmmm….

Perhaps his very analysis constitutes evidence that he’s onto something?

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Culture on the Edge is comprised of a core collaborative research group and its invited guests. Together they interrogate the contradiction between the historicity of identity, which is always fluid over place and time, and common scholarly assertions of a static and ahistorical origin for an identity community (whether religious, national, ethnic, etc.) against which cultural change can be measured. The collaborative has a book series with Equinox Publishers.